The US keeps winning and scoring goals, which provides me with a lot of interesting numbers. Here is a bunch of them.

* The US extended its USMNT record winning streak to nine games on Sunday. It was also the eighth straight victory on American soil. The US record for consecutive wins on US soil is 10 done between June 15, 2008 and July 8. 2009.

* The current nine-game winning streak is the longest active streak in the world among the current FIFA Top 25 teams. The Spanish stat guru Mr. Chip tweeted out that the nine-game winning streak is the second-longest active streak in the world among all teams. The United Arab Emirates currently hold a 10-game wining streak according to Mr. Chip and FIFA.com (Soccerway has them at 11, while Elo’s site has them losing to North Korea earlier this year in a friendly. Since it involves North Korea, Kim Jong-un could have made up that score.).

* Also according to Mr. Chip, the nine-game winning streak is the fourth longest in CONCACAF history. The longest, according to him, is 11 straight victories. Since he didn’t say who had the longest streak, I decided to waste my Sunday night digging through Mexico’s all-time results and found an 11-game winning streak that ran from March 27, 1935 to February 18, 1938. They didn’t have any other 9+ game winning streaks in their history on FIFA.com.

* With the win on Sunday, the US has now made the semifinals in each of its last seven Gold Cup appearances and has made the semis in 11 of its 12 all-time Gold Cup appearances.

* The US has now scored 5+ goals in 21 games all-time, with four of those games coming under Jurgen Klinsmann. Three of those games have happened this year, all this month, and the US has never had more than two five-goal games in a single calendar year until 2013.

* Including yesterday’s five goals, the US is averaging 2.50 goals per game in 2013. Only two years in USMNT history has the US averaged at least 2.00 goals per game for the whole calendar year: 2.18 in 2008 and 2.00 in 2000.

* The US has already scored 16 goals this Gold Cup, breaking the US single tournament record of 13, done in 2003 and 2007.

* While Landon Donovan extended his own Gold Cup record with his 16th career goal of the tournament on Sunday, he also tied a USMNT single-game record for any game with three assists. Cobi Jones had three assists against the Cayman Islands in 1993, while Landon Donovan also had three assists against Trinidad & Tobago in 2009.

* Donovan has recorded six assists this tournament with each one going to a different goal scorer (Mix Diskerud, Eddie Johnson, Clarence Goodson, Brek Shea, Michael Orozco Fiscal and Stuart Holden). Talk about getting others involved.

* His first assist on Sunday went to Clarence Goodson who scored his fifth career goal with the USMNT. Three of his goals have come in a Gold Cup and Goodson is one of two players to score 1+ goal in each of the last three Gold Cups (also Blas Perez of Panama).

* Another one of Donovan’s assists went to Eddie Johnson who was on the field for a total of 15 seconds when he scored the goal. While he looks like Sisqo, he has now scored in two different games in the same calendar year for the first time since 2007.

* Donovan’s goal was the 54th of his career, one shy of tying Carlos Ruiz of Guatemala for the third most in CONCACAF history. Stern John of Trinidad & Tobago leads the way with 70, while Carlos Pavon of Honduras is second with 57.

* Probably the most impressive player on the field for El Salvador was Rodolfo Zelaya, who scored his fourth goal of the tournament on Sunday. With him also scoring four goals in the 2011 Gold Cup, Zelaya joins Landon Donovan (2003 and 2007) as the only players in Gold Cup history to score 4+ goals in two different tournaments. With Landon Donovan currently sitting on three goals in this year’s Gold Cup, he needs one more to become the first to do it in three different tournaments.

* And finally, I looked at Jurgen Klinsmann compared to other USMNT managers through their first six games back in 2011 since it wasn’t a pretty start. With things turned around (and Sunday being his 35th game as head coach, a nice sort-of round number), I decided to look at things again. Here is how he stacks up with the five other managers to reach at least 35 games in charge of the US. He is right up there along Bob Bradley for one of the best 35-game starts.

15 Responses to “Inside the Numbers: Post-Charm City numbers”

2tone, i always thought Bradley got a bad rap. But, he only went into BIG games with a defensive mind. I don’t mind that, though. I don’t want Klinsi to think he can go and attack Bosnia, England, Germany all day long.

Bradley deserves to be considered amongst our best managers ever. He is.

I thought Bradley was a great coach, but Jurgen will never face the pressure Bradley did being the Golden Boy. Bradley basically coached every game on the hot seat, Jurgen has been given the longest rope I have ever seen. I hope this form continues though and isn’t a product of sub-standard competition.

Good point about the long rope Jerry. There have been a few times (and I hate saying this without being able to recall a specific reference, but this is the internet so what the hey) that I felt Klinsmann was one loss away from being terminated. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the most successful teams around the world have had long tenured managers (Chicago Bulls, Manchester United, Atlanta Braves, even what Everton’s been able to accomplish with their budget). It gives a manager time to make adjustments to the team and implement his strategies and tactics. On the other hand look at Chelsea with they’re revolving door of managers. The only Champions League trophy they have is courtesy of a stand in and then he was fired! (I say “only” because the goal is obviously to be a contender every year which they haven’t been)

I feel like Bob Bradley had a lot of critics based solely on his pedigree or lack thereof. Even losing to Mexico in the Gold Cup final wasn’t a horrific result (although it was a crushing blow). I think he was scapegoated a little bit after that game. It shouldn’t define his term in charge though and I think some people forget what we accomplished under him. He led the US to Gold Cup gold in the one that counted, got us to a final in a FIFA tournament, topped the WCQ group and led us to a first place finish over England in the World Cup. I think where his image took some hits was in the “what if” department. What if we kept our lead over Brazil, what if we defeated Ghana, what if we won the Gold Cup after going up 2-0? In my opinion, he’s been short shafted by many American fans and that’s one of the reasons it’s so great to see him succeeding in Egypt.

Completely agree with everything ian said. You need to give coaches/mangers time to succeed. It takes so much time getting the right players into the right system, and most importantly building a team culture. I don’t think a coach should ever be fired in the middle of a world cup cycle. We wasted a calender year of this cycle before firing our manager and going into a completely different culture. The team adjusted slowly and we didn’t have a smooth qualifying campaing at first, if we didn’t have such a weak group we may have been eliminated. And God bless us that we weren’t at the confeds cup (imo we would’ve been toast).

Bradley was a good coach and after the world cup it was kind of a raw deal. “We like you and we’ll keep you until klinsi says yes, then you’re fired.” I firmly donot believe he was fired because of the gold cup final, but because Klinsmann had said he wanted to/would coach us. The timing for USSF was perfect.

He was never committed to the post or he would’ve taken it right after the world cup. Jurgen Klinsmann cares about what’s important to Jurgen Klinsmann. Does he like our team? Yes. Does he want our team to succeed? Yes. But his personal success at the helm of our ship is far more important than the ship itself. Inour first 28 games under klinsmann we saw 28 different starting lineups. Klinsmann wants to be seen as the genius and at times this is a liability.

If we keep convincingly beating middling concacaf teams, and spruce in wins over mexico and bosnia, I will be very happy with how we look. Kinda that boise state feel: dominating among our peers and with a couple good wins against the worlds best (germany, bosnia, good road draw with russia). Were moving up the ladder. Some people don’t like the fifa rankings, I think they’re a pretty good indicator if you look at them the right way.

Bradley was a great coach. I think everyone was a huge fan of his especially early on. The graphic doesn’t tell you that Bob Bradley was 20-4-21 in his last 45 games as US manager. I think that is a major reason as to why people turned on him.

That plus his incessant need to continue throwing Bornstein and Rico on the pitch in big moments/games and having it backfire time and again should be remembered.

And yes Klins had 26 different lineups in 26 games, but that was something that people liked about Bradley early on…he brought in huge player pools to get a look at as many players as possible.

Bob Bradley’s biggest issue was his allegiance to certain guys…and it finally caught up to him.

Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley are accomplished and should be lauded for their achievements.

Bob Bradley is a good coach, but the 2010 Wolrd Cup was luck, and exceptions were so low that Bradley was left off the hook for some awful coaching.

Findlay starting over Edson Buddle still haunts me. Buddle was in the form of his life and Findlay started over him and embarrassed himself. Ricardo Clark starting over Marice Edu was tough also, I’m not trying to over criticize after the fact, but at the time I was puzzled how Clark was starting over Rangers starter Edu. USA also won that group with a + 1 GD and only won 1 game the entire World Cup. Yea we won the group but it took came down to the last minutes just to make it out of the group. It’s not like we had the group wrapped up or even dominated a game the entire tournament. It was gritty Bradley performance that won us the group. I kust think we would have been blown out just the same if we had a tough Group like in 2006.

I think we were in a easy group and some better coaching could have got to the semi-finals. Ghana was beatable, and Uruguay is the softest team you will ever see in the quarterfinals.

I wouldn’t call having a game winning goal against Slovenia disallowed for no apparent reason lucky. If the US wins that game then my guess is Bradley starts Clark against Algeria to rest Edu for the knockout rounds. I think Clark was put in for squad rotation and probably because Bradley underestimated Ghana.

Yes. True. I remember people saying that Findley’s “speed” would give the English squad cause for concern. I remember laughing at the time, as if English defenders were just going to let him run on by and knew nothing about positioning. I think he was subbed off at half time.

Ghana was beatable. But Boca and Demerit got owned on that 2nd goal (particularly Boca, who had position behind Gyan but was simply out-hustled to the ball).

And that first goal, yeah Clark was poor, but look at the pass Bradley made to Clark, he led him with a defender right in front of him. And then Demerit did not close him out at all, and Howard got beat on the short side. Literally 4 mistakes on that one play. Just think of the options we now have at CDM, just 3 years later.

God, I’m so excited for the next world cup now. Anyone want to name a 23 man squad? I’m having LOTS of trouble figuring out which Center Mids to play. Talk about a wealth of options: Bradley, Jones, Cameron, Stu, Edu, Mix, Williams, Morales, Beckerman. SO MANY.

@Ian your right about the bad calls, but I think the result vs England was pretty lucky, still love that Dempsey goal.

I was talking about the group draw being lucky and winning only 1 game and having a 1 GD and winning the group. I think the 2006 USMNT team really wasn’t much worse, they just got the group of death draw.

Bradley had a problem with showing favoritism to players that played for him in the MLS. (Ricardo Clark and Bernstein) I really don’t fault Bernstein for the Mexican game that made him a joke, Bradley played him vs Mexico when he was so out of form he was practicing with a MX League reserve team.